Carter and Bill Clinton caused the credit crunch

[WBU ALUM]

Snopes is full of it on this one.

As each was revealed to be on Obama's staff, each ran and hid. Now they're considered former advisors, but they're still advising.

[BobHelm]

No, only 1 was "revealed as an Obama adviser", for 1 month....on the 3 person potential VP vetting panel.

There is no evidence that Tim Howard has ever had anything to do with Obama.

Raines???

By Raines's own account, he took a couple of calls from someone on the Obama campaign, and he or she had general discussions about economic issues. I have asked both Raines and the Obama people for more details on these calls.

[WBU ALUM]

Raines is a liar.

He has lied to Congress. He has lied to investors in Fannie Mae. He has lied "on his own account."

[jackspratt]

No, only 1 was "revealed as an Obama adviser", for 1 month....on the 3 person potential VP vetting panel.

There is no evidence that Tim Howard has ever had anything to do with Obama.

Raines???

By Raines's own account, he took a couple of calls from someone on the Obama campaign, and he or she had general discussions about economic issues. I have asked both Raines and the Obama people for more details on these calls.

[BobHelm]

Ah, but you are forgetting, Jack

Raines is a liar.

He has lied to Congress. He has lied to investors in Fannie Mae. He has lied "on his own account."

So he must be Obama's Chief Economic Advisor.

[aznyron]

so did GWB lies destroyed lives and our freedom and he was in charge when the melt down happened and has been here for 7 & 1/2 years amazing how the fingers are pointing to past administrations but jump over others go to clinton years but jumps over Bush & R.R years and lands on Carters years what B/S get told in here

[WBU ALUM]

I will be glad when George Bush leaves office, but it won't be for the same reasons, aznyron.

[aznyron]

I will be glad when George Bush leaves office, but it won't be for the same reasons, aznyron.

you can call me Ron every one in here knows my name including you
I am thrilled you will be happy when Bush leaves I think your a little late making that statement
yes I am 100 % positive it for different reasons you see I believe he is a murderer 1 for getting us in a war
which he knew was founded on lies 2 and to continue the war and advocating more lies and 3 I hold him
100% responsible for the destruction of the WTC and building 7 now back to Carter & Clinton
what about them more B/S lies like you said in the past the president does not make laws only D. President
do Rep. president are not responsible for what happens under there watch it always the D. congress that screw up his presidency when it R. controlled they blame it on the last D. congress

[WBU ALUM]

I am thrilled you will be happy when Bush leaves I think your a little late making that statement

I was never required to make that statement. There have always been things with which I agreed and disagreed regarding Bush's presidency. We just don't agree on what those are.

[TJ]

..."The problems that began with home mortgages, analysts say, are migrating to auto, credit card and commercial real estate loans.

The deepening red ink underscores a crucial question about the government’s plan: Will lenders deploy their new-found capital quickly, as the Treasury hopes, and unlock the flow of credit through the economy? Or will they hoard the money to protect themselves?

John A. Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch, said on Thursday that banks were unlikely to act swiftly. Executives at other banks privately expressed a similar view.

“We will have the opportunity to redeploy that,” Mr. Thain said of the new capital on a telephone call with analysts. “But at least for the next quarter, it’s just going to be a cushion."

Granted, the banks are in a deep hole. For every dollar the banks earned during the industry’s most prosperous years, they have now wiped out $1.06.

Even with the capital from the government, analysts say, the banking industry still needs to raise around $275 billion in light of the looming losses."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/busin ... ref=slogin

... "most deregulation in the last three decades took place under Jimmy Carter (with help from Ted Kennedy) and Bill Clinton. Did the U.S. government really rip up the rules, deregulate willy-nilly, get out of the way, and stop spending on education and other “public goods”? Hardly. Even with deregulation, we remain a heavily regulated society. The state has grown over the 30 years, even if the rate of growth has fluctuated."

There's an unfortunate phenomenon in politics. If a candidate says he favors markets but does little to actually free any markets once he becomes, say, president, lots of people will assume he's done so anyway. Evidence that he didn't won't matter. He will become known for his "laissez-faire, hate-the-government" policies -- even if such policies are nonexistent. Rhetoric gets all the attention.

As noted, the most important deregulation of the last 30 years occurred, or at least was set in motion, by Jimmy Carter (trucking, airlines, banking, oil prices, telecommunications, and more) and Bill Clinton (banking). But no one accuses them of devotion to laissez faire. Yet Republicans who initiate little or nothing in this regard -- or worse, sponsor intervention such as protectionism -- are portrayed as Adam Smith reincarnate.

Do you sense that a political agenda overwhelms objectivity? (Incidentally, although it's partly self-serving, Clinton does not blame banking deregulation for the current problems.)"
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=2411

[aznyron]

Once upon a long time in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each. The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.

He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.' The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!


Now You Have A Better Understanding Of How The Stock Market Works!

now you understand why I don't invest in the stock market

[rick]

Ron,

So true. The Bank wanted me to invest my redundancy in the Stock market (with nice little commision for them). I said no, thank god.

In your honour, let's rename Wall street Monkey street. there are plenty around there!

[TJ]

"During the fury and carnage of World War I, little thought was given to two shots fired from a small pistol on a leafy suburban street in Sarajevo that killed Archduke Ferdinand and his wife. Gavrilo Princip acquired fame as the man who started World War I only after the upheaval was over and historians had the leisure to trace causes from effects.

Years from now, when the tumult of World Depression II (what is known today as the Great Depression will, like the erstwhile Great War, acquire the number I) seems to lie in the past, an accurate account of its beginning will place the assassin's pistol in the hand of Charles Schumer, Democrat Senator from New York and Chairman of the Senate Banking Subcommittee. He fired the shots on June 26, 2008 in the form of a public letter he sent to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board of San Francisco and other regulators. His target was Indymac Bancorp of Pasadena, Cal. and, as must have been his intention, he killed it. After the largest bank run since the Thirties resulted from his stunt, federal regulators took the bank over and shut it down.

The world will wonder, as it long has concerning Princip, what were Schumer's motives in committing his crime against the world? An article buried on Page Three of a Saturday edition of the Wall Street Journal connects the dots, albeit in a manner that disguises a report of aggravated malfeasance as an issue of interparty rivalry as November's elections approach. Chuck Schumer was just trying to help out a group of big donors to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which the article declined to actually name. The donors were Oaktree Capital Management LP (motto: "Involved in less efficient markets and alternative investments"), a Los Angeles "vulture fund" that specializes in investments in "distressed assets," along with likeminded firms Thomas H. Lee Partners, Ares Management LLC, Fortress Investment Group LLC.

The article details contributions from the firms and their senior officers to the DSCC and the senatorial campaigns of individual Democrats over the four years that Schumer has been chairman of the fundraising entity. In May, Oaktree's quest for financial carrion led it to the doors of Indymac Bancorp, to whom it sent a letter offering $1 billion in capital that the struggling thrift obviously needed very badly. Indymac let in a team of Oaktree's analysts to perform an investigation known in the investment community as "due diligence." This process yielded Oaktree detailed inside information concerning Indymac's holdings that were not public knowledge.

Could Schumer singlehandedly have precipitated today's financial crises by issuing a public letter about a shaky thrift completely across the United States from the state he represents? Of course not--no more than Princip could send the United States and Germany to war against each other by shooting the heir apparent to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Were these tightly focused assaults the proximate causes of their respective debacles? Undeniably.

And the fallout is vastly more than either man could have imagined. Indeed, in denying any particular interest in the remnants of Indymac now being sold by the government for far less than they would have commanded at the time his analysts were searching Indymac's books for opportunities, Oaktree's chairman notes, "the rash of institutional failures has presented his firm with a rich smorgasbord of distressed assets." A rich enough smorgasbord to be sure, not only for all the vulture funds in the world, but for the extension of government power all over the world as well."
http://blog.mises.org/blog/

[BKKSTAN]

I believe in the Capitalistic system as the greatest system to attain economic prosperity.I believe that the gov'ts main function is National security!

Since the economic welfare of a Nation is a large portion of Nat'l security,I think oversight and regulations involving the trading of different forms of security should be regulated by the Gov't.Credit is the engine that keeps the economy going ,as long as it is good and reasonable credit.I see nothing wrong with the gov't laying down standards to insure that credit is extended to those that can repay only!
People and profits need not compete with each other,one is as important to the sustaining of the Nation as the other.To create bureaucracies to run the Nations business is a form of socialism that eventually tears down the economics of a country.Oversight does not need to have these large bureaucracies,with proper laws and guidelines,their are plenty of ways to enforce the laws through the Justice dept.